Pathfinders: Two fingers to the virus (2020)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two fingers to the virus

The continuing spikes in Covid cases around the world, in places where it was deemed vanquished or at least in retreat, starts to resemble the physical appearance of the virus itself, with little trumpets erupting everywhere from its spherical surface. But what’s also erupting is the trumpet fanfares of success as countries like India and Russia announce the mass production of vaccines they have supposedly developed for their home markets. How have Modi and Putin succeeded in leaving the rest of the world straggling behind them? Do they have better scientists than anyone else? Did they just get lucky?

In the case of India, it’s just political spin from the nation’s prime administer. “Not one, not two, as many as three coronavirus vaccines are being tested in India,” Modi announced with a flourish in Delhi in August, as if announcing the breakthrough of the century. But you can describe anything as a vaccine and announce tests on it. “Along with mass-production, the roadmap for distribution of vaccine to every single Indian in the least possible time is also ready,” he added with grandiose pomp but again without really saying anything.

Russia’s president Putin went further, however, by announcing that a Covid vaccine had been medically approved and would go into mass production by October. They’ve called it Sputnik V, as a two-finger reminder to the western world that Russia was first into space in 1957 with the Sputnik satellite. Ignoring calls for a global combined effort, the Russian Health Ministry has released no details of the Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials it ran last month. As for Phase 3 trials, apparently they didn’t run one.

Vaccine trials go in three distinct phases to check three distinct things: 1) will it kill or damage anyone (small test only), 2) does it do anything useful in any way at all (medium sample), and 3) does it do what we actually need it to do (big sample)? Paracetamol would pass the first two phases of clinical trials for the coronavirus. So would a gin and tonic. Almost anything would, apart from Trump’s bleach. Phase 3 is the one that matters. Without that, you’ve basically got nothing. Or you’ve got worse than nothing, because you could make Covid stronger (New Scientist, 12 August). Diseases and drugs vie in a constant arms race. If you attack a disease with a drug that’s meant to kill it, and the disease wins, it’s like Popeye getting a dose of spinach.

Vaccines are already under attack in social media, with anti-vaxxer messages outnumbering pro-vaccine posts on average by five to one, and a recent survey suggesting that, even if a vaccine is produced in the UK, up to 50 percent of the population might refuse to take it (New Scientist, 12 August). Let the idiots die, you might think, the world has enough fools, but their anti-vaxxer idiocy could kill others if it prevents society vaccinating its way to the long-hoped-for herd immunity. And any vaccine toted as effective which turns out to be the opposite will only strengthen the antivaxxer lobby and risk extending the pandemic.

Of course the Russians might be right about their vaccine, though the lack of transparency is not encouraging. Even by capitalist standards, Putin is not a team player. He will certainly be hoping the vaccine works, so he can use it as an armlock on the West, just as he did with gas supplies to Ukraine. Things in Belarus have been kicking off lately, with the repulsive and patriarchal troll Lukashenko stage-managing yet another 80 percent election ‘victory’ despite only scoring 3 percent support in polls, and calling on Moscow for support in the face of the gigantic social protests that followed. A working vaccine would be just the leverage (Ras)Putin needs if he’s considering an empire-building intervention into Belarus, as seemed a possibility when this went to press.

Big Bang in Beirut

The August warehouse fire in Beirut had already attracted a lot of media attention. As the smoke plumed up over the dock area, volunteer firefighters and a paramedic went in on the ground. On a balcony blocks away, a French architect live-streamed the fire to his Facebook friends, a bit of excitement on an otherwise dull day. Little flashes in the smoke suggested fireworks going off, which added spice to the event. Then a stupendous explosion, and a shockwave flashed outwards, ringed by a fat white condensation cloud that was eerily redolent of a small nuclear detonation. Cladding and glass flew like autumn leaves off apartment blocks across the city. The fire team was killed instantly. The architect, who thought he was at a safe distance, was also killed, and two hundred or so other people besides. The docks were obliterated, three hospitals destroyed, ships flipped, sunk or flung in pieces onto the land. The blast measured 3.3 on the Richter scale despite the force going mostly upwards. It was heard 160 miles away. It has been listed as the fifth most powerful, artificial, non-nuclear explosion in history.

Sympathetic city halls across the world draped themselves in the Lebanese flag, including Tel Aviv, though Israel and Lebanon are technically at war. As the fire burned out over the blast area, the recriminations started. How could nearly 3,000 tonnes of explosive ammonium nitrate have been kept for six years in a port warehouse without proper safety precautions, despite numerous warnings and six letters to judges, and without residents knowing about it? The conspiracy vultures descended to feast, but the simple answer was that people fucked up. The Lebanese cabinet resigned. The country’s food supply, in a pandemic, had been virtually destroyed.

Ammonium nitrate is quite like potassium nitrate, or saltpetre, and is popular because it’s cheap to make, good for fertilisers and, if you mix it with fuel oil, excellent for making bombs. Terrorists love it for this reason, which is why capitalist states are keen to phase it out. It’s not supposed to explode by itself but if you don’t store it right it will do, and has done repeatedly, killing thousands. Of the ten biggest explosions mentioned above, it was responsible for four.

We can’t say people in socialism wouldn’t use ammonium nitrate. We don’t know. But we can pretty much guarantee that they wouldn’t stuff thousands of tonnes of it next to flammable material in a forgotten warehouse for six years just because of a legal dispute over who should pay the port fees after the original shipowner went bankrupt. There are bound to be accidents in socialism too, but they wouldn’t be because of arguments between jobsworths about who owed money to whom.

Paddy Shannon

Speed and commerce at Le Mans (1955)

From the July 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tragedy at Le Mans, French automobile racing venue, on 13th June during the 24-hour “endurance” test in which one of the drivers crashed to death among the spectators, 85 of whom were killed and others injured, is a grim reflection of the price men pay in the quest for speed—or so it appears on the surface.

The question arises, why all this speed? Why should men risk their lives in order that a German “Mercedes” shall “lick” an Italian “Ferrari,” or an English “Jaguar” prove faster than both? Surely speed for speed’s sake is not the only reason for ignoring a death roll of 85 and risking a repetition? Let Mr. Charles Faroux, Le Mans director, answer our queries. According to the Bristol Evening World, of 13th June, he says:

   “In an interview with the Paris newspaper Figaro: ‘Immediately after the accident I was asked to stop the race. In spite of the horror of the situation. I did not think the sporting trial should be stopped. The British set the example three years ago at Farnhorough. Even when a disaster of such frightful proportions occurs, the rough law of sport dictates that the race shall go on.’ "

After excusing himself on the grounds of a precedent set by the British and claiming what he describes as the dictates of the “rough law of sport"—Mr. Faroux finally comes to the point and lets the proverbial cat out of the bag.

  “M. Faroux said that if the race had been stopped . . . ‘Firms could have sued us for hundreds of millions of francs, arguing that we had made them lose terrific advantages obtained by a victor in the 24-hour Le Mans Race.’ ’’ (Bristol Evening World, 13th June.)

Apparently it’s the dictates of the “rough” law of commerce that worries Mr. Faroux. but in the trying circumstances he can be excused a little confusion of words. And so on with the race, despite the dead and dying, for what is at stake here is big business—national prestige and the sales that go with it for firms with a stake in the winning car. Be it engines, fuel, or sparking plugs, tyres, or even brake linings—there’s nothing like a win at Le Mans for pulling in the orders, human flesh and blood notwithstanding. Like all other commodities, cars are produced for sale only, and fast cars sell faster than slow ones in the same price range. Thus, rival firms compete against one another in the seething, constant struggle for trade which is expressed in incidents like Le Mans, with safety margins cut to beyond the limit. This is only one of the many facets of Capitalist trading conditions, which as we said earlier on, appears to be a question of speed—in actual fact it is a problem along with wars, poverty, slums and the H-Bomb. One cannot be solved without each other. Capitalism produces these problems; Socialism alone can bring an overdue end to them. Through the abolition of his wage- slave system, man will finally master his domestic affairs.

G. R. Russell

Action Replay: Bastia Disaster (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I have done it again. 

One year in every ten 

I manage it.” (Sylvia Plath).

Sadly, one year in ten is not frequent enough for the exploiters of the public’s taste for football to draw blood in their pursuit of profit. Three years, almost to the month, after Hillsborough we have what appears to be an action replay. Once again a cup semi-final; once again avoidable casualties; once again preposterous attempts at victim-blaming; once again inadequate medical provision.

Let us make no bones about it—the Furiani stadium bloodbath in Bastia was caused by the profit motive proving too strong for the authorities to adequately consider safety aspects which most of us would regard as more important. Like the ram-raider who causes damage ten times worth what he steals, they couldn’t resist the temptation to sell 10,000 more tickets even though they must have known there was a grave risk in erecting a temporary stand for such a game.

That they knew is (at least circumstantially) evidenced by the fact that warnings were given to the crowd not to stamp in unison in that stand. The outrageous suggestion that you can expect a cup-tie crowd to behave like a chamber concert audience insults the intelligence of all but the dourest apologists for unbridled capitalism.

The parallels with Hillsborough continued when we saw the players taking down the perimeter fencing which, if there had been a quite understandable panic in the crowd, would have prevented their escape to safety.

The emergency services, to their credit, were fairly quickly on the scene at Furiani but hospital facilities for the dying and injured were far from close to hand. The nearest hospital was five kilometres away in the mountains and utterly incapable of coping with the scale of the disaster.

Again, as at Hillsborough, the dignity of the plain people of Bastia made a sharp contrast with the posturing of those in charge. The same newspaper which shows a crippled victim of the disaster attending the funeral of one of the dead reports that efforts were being made to stage a makeshift cup-final between Monaco and Marseille. The chief consideration in the timing of this event appeared to be when it was convenient for Mitterrand to grace the proceedings with his presence.

Have we learned nothing? Socialists would argue that we should have learnt never to trust a capitalist who is in a position to make a few bob. Have the capitalists learned nothing? We would argue that the rules of capitalism don’t permit them to learn any more than they need to know to make a profit.

John Usher

Between the Lines: Simon’s war (1985)

The Between the Lines column from the July 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Simon’s war
Most of us experience war only through the medium of television. Too often it is presented as a ninety-minute, small-screen fiction — an appealing and heroic adventure which depicts "Our Boys" kicking hell out of those who dared to affront the Nation. War films glorify killing and condition innocent viewers to imitate the violence they see — but only when the state requires them to. Needless to say, moralising Mary Whitehouse and her crowd of repressed would-be censors are more concerned to ban explicit acts of love from the screen than the filthy portrayal of war. Copulation is regarded as an obscenity, which affects impressionable minds, but legally sanctioned guns and bombs seem not to offend.

All of this comes to mind after watching a repeated QED documentary called Simon's War. In an unpretentious way, it showed the horrors of legalised violence better than many a more politically-motivated documentary might have done. It was the moving story of Simon Weston, a Welsh Guardsman on board the Sir Galahad when it was hit. Forty-six men died, but Simon lived — in a sense. He was not one of the forty-six whom the government (and the loyal Opposition) need have on their consciences. He survived with 46 per cent burns to his body — mainly on his face and hands injuries described as "minor" by the Ministry of Defence when breaking the news to his parents.

The opening-shots showed the patriotic parade of whipped-up lunacy which preceded the pain — flags waving, wives crying, children bewildered. and bands playing. And then off they went to perform their violent duty to the tune of the national anthem. Next scene: the dead and dying being airlifted from the area of slaughter. Cameras beside a stretcher in the military hospital showed the anguish and recorded the screams of pain of the soldier whose injuries they had decided to make a documentary about. The film then followed Simon's struggle to come to terms with the severe physical and emotional injuries which had been inflicted on him. Physically, he has been transformed from a robust, able lad who used to be a good rugby player. Emotionally, he has been stripped of his independence and turned into a hideously deformed person who is frightened of scaring his own nephew. He returns home to Nelson in Wales for a birthday celebration, but is too weak to spend the evening in the social club where he used to be "one of the lads". An old mate comments, after seeing Simon: 'I couldn't say nothing to him. I just felt like throwing up and crying." During the period covered by the programme Simon's girlfriend, who was going to marry him. ceases to be his girlfriend. These are the consequences of war — good old conventional war, remember — which don't always make the columns of the Sun. Towards the end of the programme Simon is seen at a medal-giving parade, standing to attention before the arch-parasites, the Princes Philip and Charles. As they inspect the damage to their subjects there is a voice-over, with Simon summing up his predicament: "It's all part of war really . . . I’m just a working guy who tried to do his job and got injured."

Simon's War should be compulsory viewing for every young worker who is thinking of joining the army. Let them see what it means to survive in a war: let them know what they will be asked to sacrifice in order that a minority may grow richer and stronger; let them hear the cries of pain, which are but echoes of strident nationalist rhetoric. After the Falklands war they called Margaret Thatcher the Iron Lady. But iron doesn't burn; skin does.


Terrace war
In the South Atlantic workers were paid and given medals for behaving like thugs. In Brussels, where the actions of certain so-called football supporters led to thirty-eight deaths, the violence was not ordered by the government and we are therefore expected to be full of condemnation.

Turning on the football only to watch a two-hour riot was a miserable experience. Here were workers wasting their energies in a fool's war between one set of wage slaves and another. The sport experts in the studio, led by Jimmy Hill, became more and more like propagandists for state violence. Hill proposed bringing back national service; the studio team agreed. Terry Venables suggested giving all football hooligans a minimum prison sentence of five years; there was no dissent from his fellow pundits. From the stadium in Brussels, the Ayatollah Bobby Charlton proposed a revival of good old corporal punishment. This is what happens when sports commentators panic and become so frightened by the ugly symptoms of the present system that they have no concern for the cause. The crescendo of repressive propositions coming from the TV set that night showed just how easy it is for fear to give rise to totalitarian solutions. And television allows the cultivation of such collective hysteria to be even more controlled by the state than it was in Europe in the 1930s.


Commodity-talk
Millions of people have been trained to think about what they buy through advertising slogans. They go into the grocer for a packet of "exceedingly good cakes" and some "prolongs active life" for the dog; in the sweet shop they pick up a "helps you work, rest and play" bar and perhaps "Just one Cornetto" — to the approved tune, of course; then on to the travel agent to book two weeks in Benidorm with "Well take more care of you"; down to the garage to pick up the "Vorsprung durch Technik" and fill it up with a few gallons of the petrol which "you can be sure of". It is hardly surprising that a buying and selling society has taught the consumers to go in for commodity-talk. Think of all the language we'll lose in a world of free access: no more mindless slogans and jolly tunes to persuade us to buy shoddy brand A rather than bargain brand B. In a moneyless society I suppose we will have to learn to survive without the ad-men telling us what we want.

Steve Coleman

The Class Struggle On Board The "Titanic." (1912)

From the May 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again humanity has been staggered by an appalling catastrophe, in which hundreds of human lives have been thrown away, and hundreds of homes plunged into grief and despair. Once again the wild cry of horror has vibrated through the world, and the multitude have been not only shocked, but astounded, as if the unexpected had happened. Once again the newspapers have been slobbering sentimental platitudes and unctuous hypocrisy as though this were not the best thing that has happened for them for many a long day. Once again the machinery of bogus inquiries and sanctimonious “charity” has been set in motion in order to hide awkward and incriminating facts. And finally, once again have the flouted working class, on whom the brunt of this stupendous sacrifice to Mammon has fallen, begun to forget all about it.

Well, there is nothing at all unusual in that. The workers have proverbially short memories. They have forgotten Featherstone; they have forgotten Whitehaven, they have forgotten Bolton, and in a few short days they will have forgotten the “Titanic”. Murder of workers is so common; the workers are so used to it, that they cannot even recognise it for what it is. When the murderous rifles of the soldiery shoot unarmed workers down, it is only the operation of the Law, and there’s and end on’t. When mine-owners neglect to keep their mines ventilated, and blow hundreds of miners into eternity, or brick them up in the pit to be burnt alive, it’s a lamentable occurrence but quite an accident, and again there’s an end on’t. And now that the vast “unsinkable,” the floating city, has carried its full living cargo to the bottom of the Atlantic, the workers arouse themselves in horror of it for a day or two, note with approval that the Royal Family have donated about one day’s income to the relief fund, and then slip quietly back into their sleeping sickness.

And, of course, they are to be helped to do this by a sham enquiry which will start out with the set purpose of fixing the blame on the iceberg, or at most on the dead officers who were supposed to have control of the ship. But this enquiry is a mere blind, a cunning attempt to cloak the real position and to screen from blame the real culprit.

The enquiry in America, for all its seeming fierce determination to get to the bottom of the matter, and for all the awkward evidence it has elicited, was only embarked on for the purpose of skating on the surface. If they could fix the blame on the White Star people, then so much the better for the American shipping interests. But beyond this they did not go; beyond this they never intended to go; beyond this they dared not go. All their virtuous indignation is of a piece with the “patriotism” of their grandfathers, who poisoned Washington’s soldiers with villainous provisions with an unscrupulousness even modern Chicago fails to beat.

To those who understand modern conditions no enquiry is necessary in order to apportion the blame. The starting point of this enquiry will, of course, be the hour immediately preceding the collision. They will go on the worn-out assumption that the captain had the command of the ship. No one will ask why was the “Titanic” built. No one will dream of making the designing of the ship the starting-point of the enquiry. No one will dare to suggest that the captain and his officers had not the command of the vessel.

Yet this way lies the truth. In the very designing of the “Titanic” is the first word of the tragic story, in keeping with which is every jot and tittle of evidence to the end. In the luxurious furnishings—the swimming baths, the flower gardens, the racquets courts—read the secret of the catastrophe. The ship was built to carry rich passengers across the herring-pond.

Almost the first comment that was made by the newspapers when the fatal news came to hand was that among the first class passengers aboard the vessel were millionaires who were collectively worth £30,000,000. This in itself is significant.

The fares of those six hundred first and second class passengers must have totalled an enormous sum, compared with which the passage money of the steerage was a negligible quantity. The “Titanic,” then, was essentially built for rich passengers upon whom the White Star Company depended to enable their vessel to “earn” a dividend.

The course is clear from this. The ship was on her maiden voyage; it was necessary to convince the wealthy, whose time is so extremely valuable, that she was a fast boat. So, as it is admitted, there was a general order to “smash all records”—which was duly done.

This explains why the look-out men had glasses until they reached Queenstown, but not afterwards-record smashing on the Western voyage commences at Queenstown. When records are to be smashed it is very inconvenient to have the look-out seeing too much—especially when the ship is an “unsinkable” and well-insured. It also explains why the vessel was on a wrong course at a wrong speed, and why no notice was taken of the look-out’s warning.

Much will be made of these latter facts, no doubt, and the dead officers will be blamed. It must not be forgotten, however, that capitalist companies invariably choose for responsible positions those men to do what they are paid to do. It  is all moonshine to talk of the captain being in command. They command who hold is livelihood in their hands. If we will not take risks and get the speed they want, then he must give place to one who will.

So at the bottom it is the greed for profit and the insatiable desire for speed on the part of the rich that is responsible for the disaster, whatever conclusion the Committee of Enquiry may come to. Of course, they will not give any such verdict as that, for that would be to indict the capitalist system.

The actual details of the wreck afford a further opportunity of pressing home a lesson. The evidence of the survivors and the evidence of the official figures of the saved, show that even on the decks of the sinking liner, and to the very end, the class struggle was on. Those who had clamoured for speed were the first to monopolise the boats, and the way was kept open for them by the officers’ revolvers. Even the capitalist newspapers are compelled to admit the significance of the figures. Of the first class men 34 per cent. were saved: of the steerage men only 12 per cent. Figures like those are eloquent enough without the evidence of the officer who admitted that he kept steerage passengers from a half-filled boat with shots from his revolver.

Much has been made of the fact that the cry “Women and children first” was raised, and it is not necessary to cast aspersions on the courage of any man who survives. The salient fact is that it was not a question of courage but of class. “Women and children” meant women and children of the wealthy class. Of first class women and children practically all were saved, some even with their pet dogs. Of the steerage women and children more than half perished. The “chivalry” of the ruling class does not, save in very rare instances, extend itself to the class beneath them.

We are not of those who expect any great results from this ocean tragedy. Working-class lives are very cheap, and the age that abolishes the Plimsol Line at the demand of those greedy for profit is hardly likely to insist upon the provision of proper means of life-saving or the careful navigation of passenger vessels. Murder by wholesale may be committed without doing violence to “law and order,” so long as it is committed by the capitalist class in the “legitimate” scramble for profits. The law only moves against the Crippens and the Seddons, but the murders quite commonly committed by the capitalist class are not one whit less foul, for all nobody is hanged for them.

A. E. Jacomb

Profit the goal (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Report, published on 6 July, of the Special Commission set up by the Belgian Parliament to investigate the incidents that led to the deaths of 38 football supporters at the European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium on 29 May:

Further, the immediate cause of these incidents is to be found in the fact that English and Italian supporters were side by side in blocs X, Y and Z, which was impossible to foresee given that bloc Z was reserved for Belgians. 

The Belgian Football Union and the UEFA seemed to have been motivated more by preoccupations of a lucrative and commercial nature than by their duty to ensure the safety of spectators. 

Ticket sales, as it emerges from many statements and in particular that of Mr Roosens, were completely uncontrolled. A large number of tickets allowing entry to the Z zone (a neutral zone where under no circumstances should there have been Italian supporters) were sold to Italians. 

The sale of tickets at the Heysel Stadium (where in theory only 5 tickets could be sold per person) was organised in such a way that anyone - including Italians — could without problem buy tickets for the Z bloc. This went against not only the UEFA directives but also against the measures decided before the match. Such a procedure necessarily led to a black market.

Blogger's Note:
See also the article, 'Putting the boot in', from the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Between the Lines: Keep the tears flowing (1988)

The Between the Lines column from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Keep the tears flowing

Television thrives on tears. Tears of distress make good news disaster stories; tears of sentimentality bring in a few quid for Terry Wogan's annual evening of pseudo-benevolent piety. Children In Need (BBC1. Friday 27 November, all evening); tears of anger, such as those of victims of so-called terrorists' attack, are easier images than those of explanation. It is a cruel and harsh observation to make, but the facts indicate that cheers go out in the TV centres every time news of a new cause for tears and mass suffering comes in through the teleprinter. One sees the look of excited expectation upon the faces of these tasteless, trivialising newsreaders; "And news is just coming in of an air disaster in Manchester — it looks like as many as twenty could be dead — but keep watching, we'll do our best to push the figures up — and then we'll be the first on the scene when the injured are persuaded to show their ugly wounds before the cameras — as a matter of fact, a little birdy tells me that we might just have first degree burn on a little kid to flash before you. so keep your eyes on the screen and then well show you the ritual tour of the overcrowded casualty wards by The Royal Couple".

No, of course it is not true that TV producers actually take a sadistic pleasure in seeing workers suffer, but there can be no doubt that tears make good TV for them and that is what they are out to make. One recalls that awful day when cameras showed the burning alive of those numerous workers who stood on the unsafe terraces at Bradford Football Club and perished. Of course, the commentators were genuinely moved. But something else was going on. TV uses disaster for a particular social function. Firstly, it is intended to say to viewers. "Look at these poor sods: you might be poor, insecure and depressed, but at least you're not the ones being burned alive. There's always someone worse off than you. you know". How long have workers been deterred from taking real action to solve our own misery now on the grounds that to do so would be wrong, for first we must attend to the miseries of those who are worse off than us?

Secondly, there is something inherently irrational about tears. To be sure, it is psychologically very useful to have a good cry when misery becomes too much to bear — and it is incredible the number of men who are afraid to do so, not least because of the TV imagery which shows that "men don't cry". But tears are an expression, not an explanation; a cry and not a speech. And TV likes to catch the workers at our most inarticulate and animalistic. It confirms the basic Christian doctrine that try as we might to pose as reasoned beings, when the Lord decides that it is disaster time (vicious swine that this legendary god must be) all we are empowered to do is weep like babies.

Thirdly, disaster allows the capitalist system to be seen as caring. That is why Margaret Thatcher is always on the scene — with cameras firmly focussed on her — when the tears are flowing. The newsreader lets us know that The Queen sends her condolences. When do these uncaring, rich parasites send their condolences to the families of the thousands of old people who die of hypothermia each winter because they are too poor to switch on a heater? But give us a nice, single, packaged disaster and we see just how caring these defenders of the system really are.

What TV does not show — or, if it ever makes moves towards doing so, it happens at late and undramatic moments — is why these tears must flow. Why did hundreds drown in the cold sea off Zeebrugge? Was it anything to do with the shipowners making huge profits out of over-packing cross-channel ferries? Why did they burn to death at Bradford? Were the owners of the football club, who allowed spectators to stand on dangerous wooden stands, not placing profit before human needs? Why did they burn to death on the escalators at King's Cross station? We do not yet know, but might it not have at least something to do with London Regional Transport's decision to divert the money it had allocated for scrapping the unsafe wooden escalators to building heavy steel barriers to stop fare dodgers?

Why are children in need, Terry Wogan? Your children will not be in need (and we are very glad to know it) because you receive millions of pounds for presenting trivia to the BBC. But is it really worth spending one evening a year indulging in a TV charity marathon which can only collect less than £10 million from the entire population of Britain when every hour the British government spends £1.5 million on arms alone? Children In Need shows a tragedy beyond the tragedy. The tragedy it tries to depict is that of large numbers of kids who need our pennies and the few quid which the worker can spare in order to alleviate their suffering. Credit where it is due: the presenters of the programme all do a very good job in showing us just how needy these kids are. just how tearful we should be. But the tragedy which transcends those tears is that we are now living in a society which is more than able to satisfy the needs of those deprived and diseased children — more than capable of allocating resources to end or alleviate as much as possible their suffering, but does not do so because of the warped logic of capitalism which must place profits before needs.

The real tragedy is that we must look at the needless waste of children's health and happiness which has been allowed to go on in a system which makes a TV show out of caring and an economic science out of saying "go away and die". When workers wake up to the sense of what capitalism is doing to us all — to the children of Ethiopia who now are pushed before the cameras so that more tear-flowing may be indulged in. led by the ever-miserable Bob Geldof — and to men, women and children across the world — when workers wake up there will be more important things to do than to weep. We can leave that to the tears of relief which will doubtlessly follow upon our self-emancipation.


Murder by law

If tears are what you fancy, then few programmes in 1987 could have had more effect than Fourteen Days In May, shown by the BBC last November. This was a documentary which would soon disabuse innocents who were under the misapprehension that racists stopped sending their victims into gas chambers after the Nazis fell from power. Not so. This extremely moving documentary told the story of a black worker from the Southern USA who was convicted to death for the alleged crime of shooting a white cop and — worst of all — raping a white woman. In the racist South nothing short of legalised murder would suffice to teach the man a lesson (there's nothing like death to teach us lessons, I always think) and in this particular state death is by gassing.

The BBC cameras showed the gas chamber being prepared by the wage slaves in uniform, and even the gassing of a rabbit on a trial run. All very sick. We watched the victim live out his final fourteen days on Death Row where he had been for eight years. We watched him hope for leniency and we watched him walk into the gas chamber. It was like watching a social system throwing up. After Johnson had been gassed to death we had a message from the producer flashed across the screen. On the night that he had allegedly committed the two crimes of which he had always pleaded innocent he had been with a black woman. This alibi went into a police station some time after his arrest and offered herself as a witness but was warned by the white cop that she had no right to interfere in their business.

Earlier the same month we were shown on Channel Four the excellent two-part documentary, Shoah, which told of the mass gassing of people by the Nazis half a century ago. Capitalism still goes on; the gas chambers are still being used; who the hell are the inhabitants of this system to call themselves civilised?

Steve Coleman

“Everybody did what they could” (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Tuesday October 5th, at 8.11am, a Great Western express and Thames Trains commuter service smashed head on at a combined speed of 120mph just outside Paddington station. 31 people were killed.

Preliminary reports after the Ladbroke Grove train crash suggest that the Thames Trains driver passed a signal at danger, resulting in both trains being on the same track. The relevant signal—number 109—is the same one thought to have been involved in a near-miss incident in February 1998 when another Great Western express managed to brake in time to avoid a stationary London-bound Heathrow Express train. Rail sources have also reportedly acknowledged that “seven trains run by Thames Trains have, over the last 12 months, passed through signal 109 while on red” (Guardian, October 6). Such overshoots, known as SPADs (signals passed at danger) rose from 593 in 1997 to 643 in 1998. This does not automatically mean it is drivers at fault. Drivers have made a series of complaints about signal 109, pointing out it is badly situated and obscured by overhead cables and a pylon. Furthermore, train drivers are under pressure not to be late, to avoid their firms being fined by the train companies franchise director. And drivers work long hours while having to carry out repetitive button-pressing hundreds of times a day, and are therefore more prone to dangerous tiredness and boredom.

On the very same stretch of line two years ago, the Southall crash killed seven after a Great Western express jumped a red light and smashed into a goods train crossing its path. The firm was fined £1.5 million for breaking safety regulations after a court was told that one of the train’s key safety devices, the Advance Warning System which should have sounded a Klaxon before reaching each danger signal, was not working. In the court case, the judge remarked “There appears to be a conflict between profit and safety”.

Cost-per-file calculations

In 1989, the year after the Clapham crash in which 35 people died, its inquiry chairman Anthony Hidden recommended a failsafe system called Automatic Train Protection (ATP). It regulates train speeds, ruling out red signal overruns. However, capitalist “cost per life” calculations came up with a figure of £14 million to prevent each future death with ATP, and a total expenditure of around £1 billion to fit it throughout the network. Both the previous and present governments saw this cost as prohibitive, and in August this year, John Prescott opted for a much cheaper (£150 million) Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS), which gave a more “acceptable” £2.5 million cost-per-life calculation.

Immediately after the Ladbroke Grove crash, John Prescott said that his decision to implement TPWS had “nothing to do with cost”. And speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on October 7, when asked who would pay for installing the far better system (which the deputy PM had suddenly become very keen on), Prescott simply replied “finance isn’t a problem”. Pressed a second time, he said “It could be industry. I don’t think it necessarily has to be a charge on government . . . It is not a problem”. This is not so. If the 25 train operating companies are made to pay around £2 billion at today’s prices for ATP (or any other more advanced system), this charge would have to be passed on passengers through raised prices. Additionally, huge state subsidies (£1.8 billion in 1997-98) paid to the train operating companies are due to be reduced to £0.9 billion by 2002-03. The combined extra financial burden could make rail transport far less competitive in comparison with private cars, coach and bus journeys, and deter many from using trains. That loss of competitiveness would mean a significant loss of profits, and since profits are capitalism’s priority, the fact is ensuring maximum safety on the railways would turn into a commercial disaster.

What capitalist solution to over-expensive or under-safe rail travel can we expect now the old British Rail network has been broken into 100 component parts by privatisation in the dog days of John Major’s government? Car drivers having to pay yet higher prices for petrol and diesel to force them to use trains? There has to be a limit to what millions of motoring will tolerate before voting against those imposing the charges. Asking Gordon Brown to pay up? Surely not after all Blair’s meritocratic free-market praise and rejection of “old” Labour. Raised wages and salaries to cover more costly fares? Most unwelcome for firms in an increasingly competitive global market. Could William Hague offer us a way out? Hardly. His willingness to take unemployment benefits away from anyone refusing to accept a lousy job shows considerable admiration for market forces. Liberal Democrats? Just another bunch of lookalike politicians. So what’s the answer? Let us take another look at what happened in the Ladbroke Grove crash, for not only was this a result of capitalism’s profits-before-people unavoidability, but a far better diametrically opposite way of living and working was suddenly revealed amidst the chaos.

Unforced co-operation

At Ladbroke Grove, socialists saw for a brief period capitalism’s habitual grip on people’s lives shaken off by a shared disaster, and humankind’s suppressed helpful co-operative nature suddenly came to the fore. Despite jagged mangled wreckage, fire and fumes that survivors had to escape from immediately after the impact, commuters who had been reticent strangers just moments earlier, disjointed by a competitive and individualistic marketplace, unselfishly acted to save and assist others. From getting ready to hurry off the express train and compete in a rush for the tube, taxis and buses to reach places of employment, instead, authoritative suits were removed to helpfully beat out burning clothing of others. Working women wearing heels teetered back and forth to support those more seriously hurt. Residents living nearby rushed over with ladders to reach down to the track to provide assistance. Workers at a Sainsbury’s store commandeered first aid supplies for lacerations, and bags of frozen food for burns. Staff at a school helped emergency services turn their premises into a makeshift field hospital. As one person said, “everybody did what they could”. Such abundant unforced co-operation for the benefit of all in need is how it should be; how it would be, but how it won’t be while profit-takers, their politicians, money mechanism, bureaucrats, rules and law enforcers act together to maintain capitalism’s divisive and exploitative system.

It is somewhat encouraging that every time a horrific rail, ship or air crash occurs, many people will now complain angrily to radio programmes and the press, that profit has yet again been put before people. This will almost always be true, but regrettably, come election time, this awareness and sanity about the danger of living in a profit-driven economy has usually been driven from voters minds by endless media coverage of wholly irrelevant policies on income tax, unemployment, minimum wage rates etc. And off a majority will go to mark their crosses beside some candidate who wants to govern capitalism. Such voting then guarantees yet another five years of business profit-making and cost savings having pre-eminence, thereby keeping going the conditions that will give rise to further money-related disasters.

However, with so many people now aware how much harm and misery profits can cause, the socialist alternative of the safest possible travel systems with no financial restraints whatsoever, and no over-worked stressed-out workers, appears more clearly as the way out. If people come to see that profits themselves only exist because a minority have unjust possession of what the majority need, and this dominant class exploit both with damaging anti-social consequences, then all that unfocused anger would linger, politicians’ gibberish and worthless promises would be ignored, and there would be ever-increasing support for common ownership of vital industries and other productive assets, along with politician-free democratic control over how these are used. This is genuine socialism. It has never existed anywhere. It would make restrictive and dangerous money completely obsolete. Take a little time to find out more about this people-first system before your next trip to the polling stations (or some other serious trip).

Max Hess

Editorial: Burning Injustice (2017)

Editorial from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

So many things about the Grenfell Tower fire continue to stink, even weeks after the disaster. The flames were not even out, nor the bodies counted, before the recriminations and finger-pointing began.

Not surprisingly the building owners, Kensington and Chelsea Council, quickly came under savage criticism for spending £8.6m on a recent refurbishment aimed at creating new rentable space and prettifying the exterior with new cladding, but not bothering to install sprinklers or ensure that the cladding material was fire-proof.

Why, people wanted to know, was there only one fire exit in a building of 120 flats, an exit frequently blocked by rubbish including old mattresses which the council did not remove? And why, when the fire broke out, was there such chaos on the ground with nobody from the council on the scene to establish any kind of central meeting and information point for survivors and anxious relatives?

Perhaps it was to deflect some of this blame that the council leader shamelessly implied to the press that sprinklers had not been installed because residents did not want the inconvenience. Though disaster frequently brings out the best in ‘ordinary’ people who fall over themselves in a rush to help, as we also saw after the Manchester and London attacks, the same cannot be said for elected officials. While Jeremy Corbyn lost no time in racing to the scene, and even the Queen turned up, the hopelessly aloof Theresa May bungled yet another press opportunity by ignoring the victims and speaking only to firefighters, sparking a huge march in Whitehall demanding her resignation.

It would be a truism to point out that capitalism doesn’t care about the poor. It comes as no surprise to learn that tower blocks for rich people have multiple exit points, sprinkler systems and efficient fire-proofing. A similar fire that swept through Dubai’s plush Torch Tower in 2015 yielded no casualties at all. The fact that residents’ frequent warnings about the building’s safety were ignored by a council presiding over one of the richest boroughs in one of the world’s richest cities is also par for the course.

What we ought to learn from this, if we don’t already know it, is that capitalism’s elected officials and bureaucrats are not smarter, better or faster than the rest of us but are, on the whole, greedy careerists and bone-idle time-servers with their eyes on the perks and not on their responsibilities. When it really counts, it is the so-called ‘ordinary’ people who, time and time again, show initiative, common-sense, cooperation and indeed heroism, while the elected officials stand around with their thumbs up their backsides waiting for someone to tell them what to do. If socialism relied on people like that, we would give up the revolutionary project right now. Instead, it is the ‘ordinary’ people – the vast majority of the world’s population – who show in times of crisis that they have got what it takes. They are, in short, ‘ordinary’ enough to change the world.

The Review Column: Space Deaths (1967)

The Review Column from the March 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Space Deaths

The American space authorities knew that the pure oxygen used in their ships carried a serious risk of a rapid, intense fire. But to have changed to a mixed gas system would have delayed the entire American space programme.

If everything went perfectly according to plan, the danger would come to nothing.

In the same way, if everything had gone according to plan the early Comets would not have broken up in the air, there would have been no typhoid epidemic at Zermatt, the spoil heap would never have crashed down the mountain at Aberfan.

Capitalism is a society where economic rivalry — they call it competition—is not only inevitable. It is actually encouraged.

As one result of this rivalry, America and Russia are now engaged in a grim race. They are not probing out to the Moon merely to satisfy a lust for adventure but because the development of rockets has opened up space as a strategic highway, perhaps to be used in a future war.

No major power can now afford to ignore the ballistics of space. Each landing on the Moon adds to this knowledge, apart from the fact that it brings nearer the day when other planets become military bases for the great powers on Earth.

Neither America nor Russia can afford to fall behind. If this means that they have to take chances—with equipment, with buildings, with human lives—this is all part of the competition for top place in Space.

A big prize. Beside that, does it matter to capitalism that trapped inside the burning space craft there were three human beings?

Bank Rate Cuts

Bank Rate is generally regarded among the economic “experts” as a means of controlling the economy.

Put up the Rate, runs their argument, and you slow down production; put it down and production will start booming.

None of the experts have ever explained why, if it is really so easy to control capitalism, the economy ever gets into a crisis.

The Chancellors’ decision to reduce Bank Rate by one half per cent was greeted as a stimulant to British industry.

“One positive gain,” said the Daily Telegraph, “it (the government) hopes to see . . . is a greater willingness among businessmen to proceed with their capital investment programmes.”

Since September 1953, when Bank Rate was 3½ per cent, there have been twenty seven changes. Both Conservative and Labour governments agree that Bank Rate helps to control the economy, both have upped it to seven per cent in times of crisis.

But none of these changes have altered a course of economic events which was already set. They have, in fact, been made in response to those courses; they have been not an influence but a reaction.

Callaghan’s panic seven per cent last July was no exception and neither is the latest reduction. William Davis, the Guardian’s Financial Editor, put it:

I gather that the Bank of England advised the Chancellor a a few weeks ago that a half per cent cut in Bank Rate couldn’t be delayed much longer.

The economy of capitalism, as so many Chancellors have found out cannot be controlled, by Bank Rate changes or any other juggling. The Labour Party should know this, perhaps better than anyone.

For they once had a mighty Plan to defeat economic crises. But just like the Tories, they end up doing what the Bank of England tells them.

Export Incentives

Harold Macmillan, in one of his languid moments, once said that exporting is fun.

Harold Wilson, and Prince Philip, will have none of this. Exporting is a stern business. It is, in fact, a national duty.

In case there are any firms with a sense neither of fun nor of patriotism, the Labour government have provided some inducements to make them look favourably on exporting.

It is apt comment on whether Wilson really believes in the appeal of national duty, that these inducements are financial—tax rebates and so on.

By this the Labour government show how firmly they realise there is only one kind of incentive capitalism understands and that is one which improves the balance sheet.

This is basically what decides a company on whether to export their produce or not. Unless the financial bait is juicy enough, they will ignore all the speeches about national duty, and happily forego their fun, by concentrating on the home market.

This is how Derek Pritchard, chairman of the British National Export Council, put it in an address on January 18 last:

No one in their senses exports at a loss in the national interest. This is a sure way to go out of business. No business man today exports at the behest of politicians. He does it because he sees a chance of making a profit.

There is, of course, nothing exceptional about this statement. All production under capitalism is carried on in the hope of making a profit. If a capitalist thinks that a market, home or abroad, is too tough for him to realise his profit there, he will avoid it. Politicians and princes may blather about having fun and the national interest but in the end they have to face the uncomfortable facts of capitalist life.

The D’Ollveira Affair

The South African government have always made it plain that mixed colour touring teams were not acceptable to them.

For a long time the issue has been dodged by the sporting authorities of the countries which send teams to South Africa. Recently, the New Zealand Rugby Union was brought face to face with it; some of their best players are now Maoris and they were not prepared to go into Tests against South Africa without them. So they cancelled their tour.

Now the MCC are probably praying that Basil D’Oliveira will get them off the hook by losing form (and in the circumstances he will be something of a cricketing superman to keep it) so that the question of his selection does not arise.

Of course, the South African government have been accused of mixing politics with sport. And so they are.

But what were those ranting, hysterical thousands at the World Cup Final doing, but mixing nationalism—which, after all, is politics—with sport? Each foreign foul booed, each English foul applauded as an act of manliness, mixed politics with football.

South Africa’s ban on D’Oliveira is no more than the projection of their unsavoury political and racial theories into cricket. Anyone who objects to this, and who wants to see sport as a contest carried out for the sake of the game alone, cleanly and with no grudges, should ask themselves whether this will ever be possible in a society which fosters racism, nationalist hates and economic rivalry.

Going underground (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of writing, the "public" inquiry into the King's Cross fire in which 31 people were killed is in progress. Already there have been astonishing revelations about poor safety standards, and the hazards created by limited cleaning and maintenance budgets. The inquiry is likely to generate reams of waffle, with much soul-searching and mutual recriminations. There will be weighty statements about neglect, responsibility and human failings.

What the final report is unlikely to admit, however, is that these deaths, like so many others, were caused by money, or rather the lack of it. In the case of the Zeebrugge disaster and many other recent "accidents", we have been able to show using the publicly available evidence, that the cause was economic. King's Cross was no exception. The profit system constantly channels resources away from real human needs and into speculative investment and capital accumulation. It is only after a disaster has happened and an "unacceptable" number of lives have been lost, that the possibility of allocating slightly more resources to public safety is considered.

We have already pointed out, in a previous issue, how some time ago, money intended for replacing the wooden escalator at the heart of the fire had been diverted into funding murals and other decorations intended to improve the image and profitability of London Regional Transport as a trading enterprise. That wooden escalator, which those who know King's Cross will be only too familiar with, was about fifty years old. It dated from an entirely different period in technological terms. Was there an automatic fire sprinkler system throughout the station? No. Was there a special alarm system, which might respond to smoke? No. The fact is. even some of the modest household devices which the moderately well-off might be able to afford are absent when they have to be funded by the state.

Why is this? Because the capitalist employers who ultimately finance the state have, as their priority, the accumulation of capital. Despite recent claims in a Conservative Party Political Broadcast that "we" pay £700 to the NHS every second, we know that PAYE is just another con to make us feel we have a stake in government. In fact, with or without tax. as workers our living standards are constantly forced to the minimum by the profit priority. Public safety is also often of low priority. We don't need a "public inquiry" to tell us that King’s Cross station, like so many others, is dirty and dangerous, with only meagre safety procedures.

LRT is in the process of putting cleaning and other maintenance duties out to tender by private companies, whose budgets and treatment of their workers are even more penny-pinching than LRT was. And some of the recent priority areas of expenditure on the Underground and Buses (which are continuing as priorities, despite the fire) show an utter contempt for human life which should earn the LRT management a medal as upholders of the capitalist mentality. Expensive video cameras are being installed on London buses to prevent vandalism. Nearly one million pounds is being spent every year on cleaning "graffiti" from tube trains, much of which in recent years has been based on New York "street art" and is quite eye-catching. But such spontaneous marks on the environment are seen as offensive, and are wiped out in favour of the imposed corporate design. It is also an example of the warped priorities we are referring to: the moral guardians who are so offended by rude words (no, they don't mean "war" or "poverty") are served by teams of special cleaners, whilst the ancient debris which fuelled the fire under the escalator was left to rot. And perhaps most dramatically of all, millions of pounds are currently being spent installing new high-tech ticket machines at every station. which are said to be more cost-effective. This will allow a massive redundancy programme of 900 ticket office staff, which is already under way. In addition new barriers (which we will have more to say about below) are being installed which also cause ticket collectors to be made redundant. Together with the recent introduction of "one-man" trains on almost every line, this is all part of the cost-cutting exercise which is the inevitable obsession of the capitalist system. The inquiry might touch on the possibility that if trains had still had a second operator the death-toll might have been reduced, but will it explore the reasons behind the cost-cutting obsession?

Leaving to one side these overwhelmingly economic factors, what about the supposed problem of callous neglect? It is true that early reports of smoke appear to have been neglected by staff, and no doubt the actions of these LRT workers will be held up to public scrutiny. Those who prefer not to see social problems for what they are will find here the perfect victims for individual blame. But it is hardly surprising that workers under pressure will sometimes act "negligently". Quite apart from the long hours, low pay and dirty conditions which all but destroy any enthusiasm or job satisfaction, the hierarchical system of management within such an institution teaches those within it that they must not step out of their assigned area, or act with creative initiative. And in addition to the weighty bureaucracy (which has always been associated with the railways in particular), there is the ethic of self-interest, the idea of the competitive rat-race which the government does so much to promote. Even without their propaganda efforts, an economic system exists throughout the world today which teaches people from birth that in order to fit in with things as they are, they must avoid too much humane caring for others, too much soppy sentimental sensitivity, otherwise they will be "done down". And then the same hypocrites who applaud the vicious self-interest of the "business world" of enterprise will try to pin the blame on the "uncaring" workers at King's Cross station that fateful day.

This brings us finally to one or two of the more bizarre escapades which have also emerged lately from the enterprising young whizz-kids in charge of London Underground. On 31 January the Observer exposed plans being urgently pursued by Chris Bennett, London Underground's industrial relations manager, to sell off the less profitable underground stations which will be run instead by commercial interests or even voluntary groups. By franchising off sections of the network to commercial operators, they will cut staff still further and approach their target of becoming a profitable enterprise with no government support whatsoever. Where private buyers cannot be found, "responsibility for stations may be offloaded to voluntary groups, such as Neighbourhood Watch schemes, or Underground enthusiasts". Let us hope that these Underground enthusiasts are also handy with a fire extinguisher. It is thought that young people on YTS schemes could also "be pressed into service". As a possible pilot area for the scheme, they have identified the line from Epping to Ongar. which has been kept open recently only because of pressure from residents (how cheeky they are to expect to have stations where they live!).

The most vivid example of profit's tyranny comes in the shape of the new barriers referred to above. They are ugly, shoulder-high constructions, designed as the ultimate obstacle to the dreaded fare-dodgers, those people who dare to go on "our” public railways without paying. The installation of these barriers will cause 1,200 ticket collector redundancies. LRT hope. The Fire Brigades Union has strongly opposed the barriers, with Mike Fordham. FBU Deputy General Secretary stating that "People will die somewhere at some point because of these barriers" (London Evening Standard, 11 December 1987). The NUR has also pointed out that if such barriers had been at King s Cross on the night of the fire, "they would undoubtedly have produced more deaths that night". But LRT push on regardless. A spokesman was quoted as saying that the King's Cross inquiry was "irrelevant and peripheral" to the installation programme. "We see no reason to delay". It seems, moreover, that these prize idiots are aspiring to comedy and farce as well as tragedy. Special panic buttons are to be fitted to the hideous barriers, to allow passengers to unlock the gates in an emergency. But London Underground has admitted that, to deter vandals and fare-dodgers. their location would be "kept secret for security reasons"! (London Evening Standard, 11 December 1987).

The FBU are right: there will be more deaths. And the sickest thing of all is that we all know there will be more deaths, more "disasters" and more theatrical "inquiries". And they will continue until we alter the basis of society, and therefore its priorities.

Clifford Slapper

Aberfan: Disaster In The Hillsides (2016)

From the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the early winter of 1966 Hoover Limited sent a minor manager from their vacuum cleaner factory in West London to the massive plant in Merthyr Tydfil South Wales where they made washing machines. The manager took a train to Cardiff where he was picked up by one of the company cars and chauffer to take him to a hotel where he was to stay for a couple of nights. During the journey both men were silent, without the chatter which usually enlivened their journeys together. When they arrived at the hotel they got out of the car and looked across to some high land where floodlit earth machines were at work. Then the driver spoke. ‘Aberfan’ he said. It was November 1966 and they were looking at the site of the worst mining-related disaster in British history.   

Aberfan is a village in South Wales which was once heavily dependent on employment at the nearby Merthyr Vale colliery. It now has a community centre, flourishing with its swimming pool, fitness rooms and café. There are also two schools, which provoke unbearable memories of that tragedy fifty years ago. Coal mining began there in 1869, when a pit was sunk on the banks of the Afon Taff; in 1875 the first commercial coal was brought to the surface – the beginning of a history proud enough to accentuate the grief and misery which devastated the village in October 1966. On that occasion the deaths did not originate underground, in a coal mine; many of the people who died were buried and suffocated in lethal slurry from the open ground above. A total of 144 people were killed in minutes; 116 were children and no survivors were found after 11am. Many of those who did survive have since suffered from persistent psychological disorders – for example the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2003 recorded that half have suffered from PTSD, which for about a third of them will persist as a lifetime disorder. A typical comment was by the author Laurie Lee who, after visiting Aberfan a year afterwards, described the school children there as ‘…the unhealed scar tissue of Aberfan’.  The colliery was closed in 1989.

Slurry

The basic cause of the disaster was tipping – the deposit of spoil of varying content and consistency  which had been extracted from the colliery, onto the ground overlooking  Aberfan when more convenient lower sites had been filled to their limit. By 1966 there were, looming above the area so that they could be distantly viewed from that hotel, a number of mounds – or tips – which were known by numbers 1 to 7, the last of which was the most ominous. There was no proper regular inspection and maintenance of the tips to check on their stability although they were composed of loose rock and other extracted material within a massive layer of sandstone. This was a dangerously absorbent composition which through the addition of water from underground springs could develop into a slope steep enough to accelerate the descent of the heavier spoil and slurry which would wipe out whatever – and whoever – lay in its path. In fact some local councils had questioned, in 1963, whether it was safe to dispose of the colliery waste in that way, particularly when in the direct path of such a descending geological missile there were the village primary and senior schools as well as other inhabited buildings. But any such questions were effectively ignored by the local National Coal Board.

Schools

On that dreadful day – 21 October 1966 – South Wales had already suffered several spells of torrential rain, which in itself was enough of a problem for the pupils of the local Pantglas School as they scurried from home to the last school day before  breaking up for the half-term holiday. Soon after 9.15 am a mass of liquid containing material brought up from the mine broke free from the tips and began to smash down towards the village and the homes and the schools and the children below. A gang of workmen who were on Tip 7 to inspect a fault with the railway which carried the disposable material from the mine were resting with a cup of tea when they saw the rapidly approaching disaster but they were unable to warn the village about it because the cable of their telephone had been stolen (although the subsequent enquiry was clear that no warning could have improved the situation). The gang watched helplessly as a mass of over 150,000 cubic metres of saturated mining spoil broke free, moving down the slope in a series of surges. Some of it clung to the ground, leaving about 40,000 cubic metres to carry on into Aberfan.  ‘All I could see’ remembered one of them ‘… was waves of muck, slush and water… I couldn’t see - nobody could …’ The first victims were a farm and twenty houses which were swiftly obliterated with all the occupants. At Pantglas School the teachers were checking and recording attendance when the buildings were overwhelmed by a compound of muddy rubble up to ten metres deep. One eight-year-old recalled ‘… a tremendous rumbling sound and all the school went dead … Everyone just froze in their seats. I just managed to get up and I reached the end of my desk when the sound got louder and nearer, until I could see the black out of the window. I can’t remember any more’. The slurry eventually came to halt at about 9.15am; the damage had been done and by 11am the last living child had been brought out from the school; it was several more days before the last body could be found.

Nationalised

The reaction of their employers, in whatever context, and their political defenders was tediously predictable. One of the more prominent of these was the late Claude Granville Lancaster who went to school at Eton then trained at the Royal Military College Sandhurst and who eventually inherited the excessively stately Palladian Kelmarsh Hall in Leicestershire from his father along with the family investments in coal mining and farming. Like his father he was a Conservative MP, in his case for Fylde. When the Attlee government nationalised the coal industry Lancaster recognised the inevitable and ‘… gave all his support to the National Coal Board … to do his best to bring what he felt was much-needed drive and decisiveness to its cumbersome and slow-moving organisation’. He had an early opportunity to live up to these standards when the slurry came down on Aberfan but he was abroad, in what were then known as the Trucial States (since 1971 the United Arab Emirates). Soon after he returned another MP asked him to comment on the possible cause of the tragedy. To which this meticulous expert in coal mining replied ‘I fancy that you will find that it was a trickle of water’.

Another, rather different, example was a man who was raised, not into the ancient land-owning nobility but by Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to be chairman of a key nationalised industry. This was Alfred Robens who was Labour MP for Wansbeck and then Blyth until he took over Britain’s coal mines which also entailed him being ennobled, so that he became Baron Robens of Woldingham. He took to all of this with a determination which was expressed in his car being numbered NCB1 and his  access to a private jet plane and a posh flat in a most expensive part of London. These privileges he defended behind a style of management later described most moderately as demanding.

Chancellor

This style came under focus as the people of Aberfan were grappling with their demanding emergencies. To be specific on that day of 21st October Robens did not, as was expected of him as the overlord of the mines, attend that scene of suffering – although his staff falsely assured the Ministry of Power that he was there soothing the distress of the people. In fact he chose to attend a ceremony at the University of Surrey to be installed as Chancellor. The anger which this aroused locally was aggravated by his opinion that the original cause of the avalanche was ‘some … natural unknown springs’ which was particularly provocative to the grieving local people who had long-standing acquaintance with that very water source since they had played there as children. When the official enquiry was seriously critical of Robens’ behaviour throughout he offered to resign from the NCB but this was dismissed as unnecessary. At the same time the NCB refused to pay the full cost of removing the tips- an attitude which persisted until the first Blair government agreed to meet the bill – although without the interest which would have considerably raised the total. This evasion was pointedly described by another Labour MP Leo Abse as ‘… the graceless pavane danced by Lord Robens and the Minister, as the chairman of the National Coal Board’ and more recently by the Geoscientist –The Fellowship Magazine of the Geological Society of London:   ‘What happened in Aberfan was a mass betrayal of intergenerational equity … not only ripped the heart out of one small Welsh village - it sucked life out of an entire industry’. When Robens took over there were 698 pits; when he left there were 292. Which left the Thatcher government to carry on so that in the Merthyr area nearly 30 percent of the able-bodied were unemployed, apart from the other adults whose industrial diseases had led to them being registered as disabled.

Coal mining was always a dangerous occupation, to be taken up only because there was nothing less threatening on offer. This was the case in Aberfan. At the same time the miners had to struggle against a poverty as concentrated as the risks they endured in and around the pits. And the harsh reality of all this is that the employing class have an enduring priority that production – of coal or whatever – should be as cheap as possible. As they did in Aberfan with the over-looming tips and the workers’ homes. This was untouched by the continuing requirements of nationalisation with the substitution of management by an ex-left wing Labour MP for a traditionally aristocratic Tory. In commemorating that disaster it must not be ignored that Aberfan was an episode entirely typical of the demands of class ownership for human suffering and denial.

Ivan

Hillsborough (2016)

From the August 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The former Liverpool chief executive Peter Robinson presided over Liverpool Football Club during their most successful period, the mid-1960s to the 1980s. He was well known for his shrewdness and informal management style. It’s only with hindsight we learn, that on the 20 March 1989, he telephoned Steve Clarke, the competitions secretary of the Football Association and urged him not to stage the upcoming FA cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough, and suggested Old Trafford, as a more suitable venue. Clarke returned his call later that morning to say that ‘the committee had selected Hillsborough’ and ‘the police would not agree to the allocation being altered’ either (the i newspaper, 28 April).

The most striking thing about the vast body of evidence gathered on the Hillsborough disaster is that the English game’s governing body (the FA) has, from the immediate aftermath of the disaster never acknowledged that it made a disastrously bad call by failing to heed Robinson’s advice about the inadequacy of Sheffield Wednesday’s ground. Graham Kelly, the former FA chief executive, drafted an initial six-page report two days afterwards, but there is no indication that he was looking to investigate how the venue, which did not have a safety certificate, had been chosen. The document also reveals the FA’s overwhelming preoccupation after Hillsborough was with covering its own back and getting the story straight. 

96 people aged from 10 to 67 years old died at the stadium, in the ambulances, or shortly after arrival at hospital. A total of 766 people suffered injuries  of some kind. On 19 April, the death toll reached 95 when 14-year-old Lee Nicol died in hospital after his life support machine was switched off. This total rose to 96 when artificial feeding and hydration were withdrawn from 22-year-old Tony Bland after nearly four years, during which he had remained in a persistent vegetative state. This followed a legal challenge in the High Court by his family to have his treatment withdrawn, a landmark challenge which succeeded in November 1992.

On the10th anniversary in 1999, at least three people who survived were known to have committed suicide as a result of the emotional problems brought on by the disaster. Another survivor had spent eight years in psychiatric care. Numerous cases of alcoholism and drug abuse were also attributed to lingering effects from the disaster, and it contributed to the collapse of a number of marriages involving people who had witnessed the events.

Professor Scraton was an important member of the Hillsborough Independent Panel (2010-2012) and primary author of Hillsborough: The Report of the Independent Panel (2012). He provided extensive submissions to the 1997-1998 judicial scrutiny undertaken by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith. These submissions included disclosure of the 'review and alteration' of police officers' statements. Following negotiations he eventually accessed and researched all police statements in their original and altered form in the House of Lords Reading Room. Professor Scraton has remained highly critical of the Stuart-Smith scrutiny, describing it as a ‘debacle’.

Scraton's book Hillsborough: The Truth is widely accepted as a definitive account of the disaster and its aftermath. It focuses on the inadequacies of the police investigations, official inquiries and inquests, and reveals the extent of the systematic review and alteration of South Yorkshire Police statements. It also details the treatment of the bereaved and survivors in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, and the ‘inhumanity’ of the body identification process.

Following the 20th anniversary of the disaster in 2009, the government gave a commitment to the full disclosure of all documents relating to Hillsborough, appointing the Hillsborough Independent Panel to manage the process of the disclosure and to produce a report explaining the work of the Panel illustrating how its work added to the public's understanding of the disaster. Professor Scraton was appointed as a member of the Panel. He led the Panel's research team, based at Queen's University Belfast. In a parliamentary debate following the publication of the Panel's Report, Scraton’s work was commended in parliament by Andy Burnham, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, as ‘a huge service not just to the Hillsborough families but to this country’. The Report led directly to: the quashing of the 96 inquest verdicts of 'accidental death' and the ordering of new inquests by the Attorney General; a full investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Authority; and a full criminal investigation.

Sir John Goldring was appointed as Assistant Coroner for South Yorkshire (East) and West Yorkshire (West) to conduct the new inquest. On 26 April, the inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing in respect of all 96 victims. In 2012-13, Scraton received the Queen's University Vice-Chancellor's inaugural award for research impact. In May 2016 the Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, announced that Phil Scraton was to be given the Freedom of the City in recognition of his work, spanning twenty five years, on the Hillsborough tragedy.    

This tragedy has been looked at from many perspectives including the police, the judiciary, newspaper reportage and the families fighting for justice. But what about the typical Liverpool fan? Peter has been a Liverpool supporter for over 50 years. Conscious of the campaigns for the past 27 years but not emotionally involved like families and friends of the 96 killed, he attended the 20^th anniversary memorial service at Anfield and witnessed the ‘Justice for the 96”’chant when Andy Burnham was attempting to speak that moved him to take the campaign back to government.

When lies were being told almost immediately after the disaster, he struggled to believe them and even when some were convincingly refuted, he didn’t imagine the conspiracy was as deep and widespread as it turned out. As the years passed he still felt for the families, admired them, but did not forget them because LFC fans would not let that happen.

The second inquest that took over two years was important because it allowed the personal stories that were not heard previously to be told, and helped families to grieve, knowing more clearly what had happened to their loved ones. In Liverpool when the verdicts were announced, the emotions could be felt throughout the City, culminating in a huge gathering in front of the famous St George’s Hall.

Peter is proud of the families and all connected with the campaign, their dignity, perseverance etc. He is proud to be a scouser in the fullest sense, noting that the other Merseyside team, Everton were also united in grief, along with much of the football world –with tributes coming from Dortmund and Villarreal fans.

Although still appalled at the tactics and behaviour of police and other institutions that tried to justify the lies and cover ups, he is delighted that after 27 years, a serious injustice has been put right, giving hope to other long campaigns, such as the Orgreave miners who were also victims of the South Yorkshire Police. We hope that their fight is taken as seriously.

Kevin